Folder Decoration DIY

Want to make your folders more interesting? Don’t want to spend lots of money? I’ve made a step by step guide to making your folders look amazing with spending virtually no money!

When school rolls around each summer, every student knows the excitement (well, at least I get excited) of buying new stationery. You go into school with your shiny new folders then realise that literally everyone has the same ones as you and that you are bound to get them mixed up! But it seems as though the only way to get around this is to buy some fancy patterned ones which cost twice as much. Not anymore! This is just one way you can make your folders fun and personal.

First decide which colour folders you want to go with each subject. Then go through your wrapping paper collection and craft cupboard and select paper that goes with the folder colour.

I selected my favourite wrapping paper to use on my pink physics folder.

For my yellow French folder, I used an old map of Paris.

And I used pages from an old book for the red English folder.

Find an alphabet of some text you like either online or from a book and trace the outline of the letters onto a piece of paper.

Cut out the letters you have just traced.

Place these letters the wrong way round on the reverse side of your selected paper and draw around them.

Cut these letters out and play around with how you want to lay out your letters on your folders. Use a little bit of glue to hold the letters in place.

These letters will not stay on with just glue so you need to secure them down with sticky back plastic. You can buy this in lots of places like WH Smith, The Range, Tesco etc. Use the grid on the paper side of the plastic to measure out enough to cover the letters plus a few squares around the edge. Then cut this piece out. I needed some extra help from my dad for this stage.

Peel the paper back off the plastic being careful it doesn’t roll up and stick to itself.

Carefully place the plastic over the letters (remembering to leave an overhang) and smooth it out to make sure there are no bubbles underneath the plastic.

Turn the folder over, fold the plastic over the edge and, again, smooth it out to get rid of all the bubbles.

Cut a line next to the edge of the folder, along the top fold of plastic (have a look at the picture).

Cut a diagonal line across the square of plastic to make a triangle (again, look at the picture).

This is what it should look like.

And that’s it! You have your very own folders that you will never get mixed up with anyone else’s!